PHOTOS: The World's Strangest Aircraft

World's Strangest Aircraft

The Terrafugia Transition Roadable Aircraft – nicknamed the "Flying Car" – is a car/plane hybrid. It is designed to drive on public roadways and park in a standard garage, but anyone with a sport pilot certificate can also take to the skies. The FAA just granted the builders' a weight exemption, which allows them to add airbags, an energy absorbing crumple zone and a protective safety cage aimed at road safety. The flying car is expected to be available starting at the end of 2011.

World's Strangest Aircraft

The <a href="http://www.terrafugia.com/" target="external">Terrafugia</a> Transition Roadable Aircraft – nicknamed the "Flying Car" – is a car/plane hybrid. It is designed to drive on public roadways and park in a standard garage, but anyone with a sport pilot certificate can also take to the skies. The FAA just granted the builders' a weight exemption, which allows them to add airbags, an energy absorbing crumple zone and a protective safety cage aimed at road safety. The flying car is expected to be available starting at the end of 2011.

World's Strangest Aircraft

Not every trip merits a wide-body jet. Sometimes, you just want to getaway on a short hop. Well, meet the ICON A5 amphibious sport plane. This two-seat recreational plane has folding wings and can be transported via a trailer and easily stored away. But you don't want to tow it around, you want to fly it. And this plane was designed from the cockpit out to feel and perform like a sports car. The plane is expected to hit the market in the fall of 2012 at a cost of $139,000 with the majority being delivered at the end of 2013.

ICON

NASA's New Personal Aircraft

Meet Aircruise, a giant, vertical airship powered by natural energy and designed to carry travellers in style and luxury. This concept by London-based design company Seymourpowell is not to cross the ocean faster than anybody else, but in comfort and space. The vessel would fly at about 60 to 90 miles an hour, making the trip from New York to London in about 37 hours and Los Angeles to Shanghai in 90 hours.

Courtesy Seymourpowell

NASA's New Personal Aircraft

The Aircruise basically would be a hotel in the sky. The initial design proposes a bar/lounge zone, four duplex apartments, a penthouse and five smaller apartments. The aircraft would be limited to a height of 12,000 feet because the hotel is not pressurized and the hydrogen keeping it afloat constricts at the colder temperatures found at extreme elevations.

Courtesy Seymourpowell

Would You Fly in a Solar-Powered Plane?

NASA is developing the Puffin, a vertical takeoff and landing personal aircraft powered by electric motors. Forget the runway, with this mini-aircraft, people could theoretically takeoff and land in their own backyard.

NASA Langley/Analytical Mechanics Associates

World's Strangest Aircraft

The bizarre case of Richard Heene and his homemade helium balloon certainly captured the nation's attention. While it turned out to be a hoax it surely was one of the oddest flying contraptions seen over the years.

ABC News/AP Photo

World's Strangest Aircraft

Boeing Phantom Works has partnered with NASA and the Air Force Research Laboratory to study the structural, aerodynamic and operational advantages of the Blended Wing Body concept, a cross between a conventional plane and a flying wing design. The X-48B prototype might clear the path one day for a new multi-role, long-range, high-capacity military transport aircraft.

NASA

World's Strangest Aircraft

The Boeing A160T Hummingbird unmanned helicopter with the Foliage Penetration Reconnaissance, Surveillance, Tracking and Engagement Radar is being developed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the U.S. Army to provide enhanced tracking coverage of moving vehicles and dismounted troops under foliage, filling a current surveillance gap.